Although there are 21 recordings of Dido and Aeneas currently
available on CD in the UK, these two performances under review
are its only representation on DVD. The 1995 Dido conducted
by Richard Hickox has been available since that year on CD on
Chandos Chaconne CHAN 0586. It was also filmed for the BBC, shown
on BBC2 in that year and released on video by Warner Classics
in 1996. Now it appears on DVD. This is to its advantage for vocally
it strikes me as a performance of decorum, the recitatives a bit
over-measured and stagy, so the visuals add interest.

Good use is made
of the film set, Hampton Court House, a mid 18th
century mansion across the road from the Palace, to create a
sense of august and ancient surroundings yet adding a claustrophobic
element from the fiery light yet surrounding gloom. Much of
Act 1 is visually as well as musically restless beneath the
apparent smoothness of progression. There are memorable close-ups
like the impassive Dido at the outset. Camera-work enhances
the unfolding of the drama, as when Dido glides away to a private
chamber, away from the court, to convey her intimate thoughts
in her first aria ‘Ah Belinda, I am prest with torment’, matching
the privacy of her confession, then gazes intently in a mirror
but also directly at us as she sings ‘Peace and I are strangers
grown’.

There are some neat
visual anticipations of musical announcements. In the chorus
repeat of ‘Fear no danger’, before Aeneas’ appearance is announced,
we see him coming through the hall with his retinue and Dido
is then suddenly revealed, as she is to him, on the throne.
Aeneas kneels to her just before he sings ‘A hero fall’. Belinda
excitedly sings to Aeneas ‘Pursue thy conquest, Love’, Dido
takes him by the hand with a melting expression. Through the
chorus ‘To the hills and the vales’ they gaze into each other’s
eyes, their hands caress and you think they are going to kiss
but no, this is the Court. The Triumphing Dance is rather a
stuffy parade with the instrumental playing more animated. Vocally
Maria Ewing’s Dido is more successful at conveying the imposing
Queen than the unhappy woman but her facial expressions redress
this. She provides a finely shaded diminuendo on her long sustained
note in ‘Ah Belinda’ at ‘would not have it guess’d’,
emphasising the secrecy. Karl Daymond is a youthful, perhaps
somewhat naïve, ingenuous Aeneas. In vision you are conscious
of the age difference in this casting: Ewing was 45 when this
film was made. I don’t know Daymond’s age but would reckon she
gives him at least 15 years.

To the end of Hickox’s
Act 1 takes 16:50. The 2005 live recording conducted by Attilio
Cremonesi takes 47:10. This is not because he adopts elephantine
tempi, on the contrary he is livelier than Hickox, but because
Dido has here been adapted by Sasha Waltz as a choreographic
opera with additional musical reconstruction by Cremonesi. They
begin by providing a 13 minute musical and choreographed setting
of the libretto’s Prologue, for which no music survives. In
this Tritons and Nereids emerge from the sea to pay homage to
Phoebus and Venus so the first dancers we see are swimming in
a large tank, as on the DVD cover. Cremonesi has skilfully found
Purcell music from many works to supply this Prologue and extra
dances for Dido, but these aren’t identified in the booklet
so there’s a challenge for Purcell fans.

Dido’s overture’s
slow opening section is illustrated by two dancers as Cupids
drawing their bows, but adult Cupids, concentrated and with
a certain malice. The fast section brings in a flood of dancers
and there’s a sense of irresistible momentum of which the characters
themselves aren’t in control which the ‘pure’ opera indeed has.
Waltz’s approach becomes clear. The singers sing and dancers,
asterisked in the heading above, mirror their moods around them.
Deborah York’s Belinda’s ‘Shake the cloud from off your brow’
is pleasingly florid with an improvisatory feel. But Aurore
Ugolin’s Dido in her ‘Ah Belinda’ at least half dances, using
a highly stylized, self-conscious manner like sign language,
totally different from Ewing’s intimacy. Not surprisingly Ugolin’s
singing also has more emphasis on technique than emotion. Her
roulade on ‘languish’ begins in clipped staccato and later drools
indulgently. An interpolated dance after the ritornello following
this aria, the tender Air from Purcell’s Bonduca, Z574/4
(track 4 21:48 in continuous timing), better illustrates the
intensity of her inner turmoil but halts the drama’s momentum.
This is restored by snappy recitatives and choruses. I like
the writhing mass of bodies backing the ‘Whence could so much
virtue spring?’ sequence and even the chorus starts shuffling
for their repeat of ‘Fear no danger’. There’s a racy second
repeat of this by instruments alone matched by a high-kicking
solo dancer, honouring the libretto’s indication of a ‘Baske’
dance. Later a tiny Cupid dances in silhouette to the improvised
Guitars’ Dance over a ground.

At Aeneas’s formal
entry the Court is a riot of huge colourful costume, finery
matched in the Lullian trills adorning the choruses. Belinda’s
‘Pursue thy conquest, Love’ is shared between her and the First
Woman, which works well because of its echoing phrases. Reuben
Willcox makes a honey-toned if rather smug Aeneas, in this case
a little older than a young and thinly characterized Dido. The
Triumphing Dance becomes an excuse for taking off clothes. Later
these are piled onto Dido and Aeneas standing there like giant
clothes-horses, a wacky role reversal which squashes the dignity
of the protagonists, perhaps balanced by a neat speech on the
privileges of being a queen (tr. 10 42:38), part of 10 minutes
beginning with slapstick, the dancers being somewhat brutally
taught a French curtsey, and further dances for the sake of
variation; tremendously versatile but I began to wonder if it
would ever end.

Act 2 Scene 1 does
arrive with hideous figures emerging from trap doors beneath
the stage but before the Sorcerer’s ‘Wayward sisters’,
the aria which summons them. Peter Maniura, Hickox’s director,
makes the same mistake in showing the witches alongside the
Sorceress before she sings ‘Appear at my call’. Sally Burgess’s
Sorceress, smooth yet malevolently coloured with relish is preferable
to the hammy and therefore unduly comic Fabrice Mantegna in
the Cremonesi-Waltz production. This Sorcerer is an early 18th
century recasting and Cremonesi balances it with male attendant
witches, very light in manner and somewhat mincing. Hickox’s
female witches are more stunning in their florid virtuosity.
Hickox has the better Echo Chorus, suitably recessed with instrumental
backing but fails to keep that recessed backing for the Echo
Dance, a continuity of effect Purcell intended. Cremonesi doesn’t
observe it either. The BBC film benefits from a dark, dank exterior
location and a first sight of the Spirit of Mercury when the
Sorceress sings ‘My trusty Elf’. The ‘deep vaulted cell’ pictured
during the Echo Dance, after it’s sung about in the previous
chorus, looks a pretty neat underground kitchen-cum-science
lab.

Hickox’s Act 2 Scene
2 gains from the contrast of full daylight. His director shows
us the remains of the feast and Dido and Aeneas in each other’s
arms in bed. Belinda’s ‘Thanks to these lonesome vales’ is creamy,
contented, smooth yet kept flowing. In its chorus repeat Dido
and Aeneas emerge from their private tent. Now they do kiss
briefly, tenderly in public before he goes off hunting. The
Second Woman’s ‘Oft she visits this lone mountain’ is a bit
prim but the bath in which Dido lolls while it is sung seems
a match for the ‘fountain’ of the song and enhances its sense
of foreboding. The storm arrives, the tent disintegrates and
in that same bath Aeneas sees the reflection of the Spirit who
summons him away. The Spirit comes with James Bowman’s siren
command of voice but is played by Francois Testory. There’s
no suggestion the voice comes from his mouth which increases
the spookiness. Daymond’s Aeneas responds dutifully then with
lyric sensitivity to Dido’s plight as he fondles the dishevelled
bedclothes. Then he lies distraught across the bed at the end
of his arioso totally destroying his heroic credentials.

Cremonesi-Waltz
prefer almost to merge the two scenes of Act 2. The witches
writhing on the floor seem to become the courtiers, the women
now having more clothes and more colour, the men more or less
the same near nakedness. This might be suggesting the witches
infiltrate the Court but is more likely a practical requirement
of a live performance which uses many dancers on stage through
this transition. Belinda glides through the wriggling phalanx
appropriately singing the original libretto version ‘Thanks
to these lovesome vales’ in a concentrated pearly tone
of pure pleasure. Cremonesi’s Second Woman’s ‘Oft she visits
this loved mountain’ makes more impact in being more
pacy and dramatic than Hickox’s. It is however marred by its
sign language-like presentation. Another Belinda air
is shared, this time ‘Haste, haste to town’ with Dido. Again
this works well because of its imitative nature. The Spirit
is the Second Witch with clothes on, which makes his origin
clear. Willcox’s response as Aeneas is more regal, perhaps even
heroic, in its contrast than Daymond’s. Even so, you feel he
is only going through the motions of sensitivity. Hickox doesn’t
provide music for the lost witches’ chorus ‘Then since our charms
have sped’. Cremonesi gives us deliberation and malevolence.

Cremonesi-Waltz
virtually merge Acts 2 and 3 by gathering the dancers slowly
on stage with a solo violinist wandering on. Improvisation gradually
becomes the Act 3 Prelude, an imaginative expansion of the original.
For Hickox the visual presentation in Prelude and Sailor’s song
and chorus is of the last moments of pleasure in the brothel.
After this the sullen loading of the ship usurps the Sailors’
Dance. Cremonesi-Waltz supply a neatly disciplined dance with
a couple of aerial dancers to add a subversive touch appropriate
to the entrance of the Sorcerer. The link with the witches has
already been made in that the singing Sailor is the First Witch.
Although you might not recognize him then you are sure to when
he shortly sings another duet with the Second Witch. Hickox’s
witches don’t mingle in the scene but stay in the underground
kitchen yet continue to be more impressive. Their ‘Elissa’s
ruined’ has a great relish and even nobility about it. The Witches’
Dance incorporates lots of fire lighting, including that of
a model ship.

The final scene
belongs to Dido and Ewing’s dark tone is sombrely heroic. Aeneas’s
protests are unconvincing. His thoughtful exit and finally prostrating
himself in private is more becoming, though director Peter Maniura
overdoes the symbolism of a palace blazing around him. It is
as if his witches’ fire-lighting is already getting results.
For Waltz Dido and Aeneas sing in their duet of confrontation
in opposing masses of bodies, reaching out to each other but
impenetrably apart. Ugolin is fiery and impetuous but overmuch
truncates her phrases. Ewing delivers her recitative ‘Thy hand,
Belinda’ with absorbing sorrow and tragic realization of her
fate. Ugolin’s recitative is accompanied by a passionately mournful
bass viol which is rather a distraction. Ewing sinks down into
Belinda’s bosom to sing her Lament as if her dying has begun.
Her repeat of the ‘Remember me’ section is softer, so command
turns to plea. Ugolin sings her Lament shrouded in a massive
veil of her own hair which has suddenly extended the length
of her body. What should be poignant is bizarre. As for Ewing,
by the time the instrumental repeat of the funeral chorus is
done she has been carried on her bier and engulfed in flames,
roses being scattered at the end not, as sung, ‘on her tomb’
but on the charred remains.

So how do you want
your Dido visually? Hickox’s is a sensitive, straight
performance of the opera, enlivened by the film production and
settings but for all that on the sober side. Cremonesi’s is
more vibrant musically but dominated by Waltz’s choreography.
This live stage performance is a vivid celebration of the expressive
power of movement but the force of the tragic opera is overshadowed
by a sense of dance extravaganza.

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